domingo, 1 de abril de 2018

How the Bernie Sanders Wing Won the Democratic Primaries

Forget about Conor Lamb and Dan Lipinski. The progressive wing has already beaten the establishment in 2018.

With
his primary election victory last week, Illinois Congressman Dan
Lipinski—a Blue Dog and cultural conservative—won the first major 2018
battle between the Democratic Party’s establishment and progressive
wings.

But don’t be confused about what it means. The war is already over, and the establishment lost.

Even
though only two states have actually voted so far this primary election
season—Texas, a red-state redoubt, and Illinois, a blue-state
stronghold—the battle for supremacy this primary season is all but
complete. In state after state, the left is proving to be the animating
force in Democratic primaries, producing a surge of candidates who are
forcefully driving the party toward a more liberal orientation on nearly
every issue.

These candidates are running on an agenda that
moves the party beyond its recent comfort zone and toward single-payer
health care, stricter gun control, a $15 minimum wage, more expansive
LGBT rights and greater protections for immigrants.

In the
surest sign of the reoriented issue landscape, they’re joined by some of
the most prominent prospects in the 2020 Democratic presidential
field—Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris among them—who
are embracing the same agenda.

According to data compiled by the Brookings Institution’s Primaries Project,
the number of self-identified, nonincumbent progressive candidates in
Texas spiked compared with the previous two election years. This year,
there were nearly four times as many progressive candidates as in 2016.
Meanwhile, the number of moderate and establishment candidates remained
flat for the past three elections in Texas.

Even in Illinois,
where the Democratic Party holds most of the levers of power, the data
tell a similar story: There were more progressive candidates this year,
the Primaries Project reports, than moderate and establishment
candidates, by a count of 25 to 21.

In Lipinski’s case, the
congressman didn’t believe the strength of the opposition until it was
nearly too late. He scrambled in time to defeat Marie Newman, his Bernie
Sanders-backed challenger, but the slim margin of victory raises
considerable doubts about his future—including whether he can hang on in
2020, when progressives will return in force to try to finish him off
in a presidential year when Democratic turnout is likely to be even
higher.

The veteran congressman—who was abandoned in his hour of
need by some of his more liberal colleagues in the House and left for
dead by the House Democrats’ campaign arm—wrote in an article this week at RealClear Politics that
he was struck by one progressive member’s greeting once he returned to
Washington: “Congratulations might be unexpected coming from me, but if
they’d taken you out they’d be coming after everybody.”

The
party’s ascendant left is coming after everybody, regardless of the
outcome in Lipinski’s race. Progressive energy is pulsing through the
primaries, most notably in the proliferation of Trump-backlash
grass-roots groups like Indivisible, Justice Democrats and Brand New
Congress that are teeming with activists inspired by Bernie Sanders’
2016 presidential campaign. There’s no comparable counterweight within
the establishment.

Longtime Democratic incumbents—most of whose
voting records are far more liberal than that of Lipinski, an abortion
rights opponent who voted against the Affordable Care Act in 2010—have
been caught in the cross hairs of these activist groups in some of the
bluest states on the map, among them California, Massachusetts and New
York.

In Chicago, that led to the stiffest primary competition
to date for Lipinski and fellow Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, with both
incumbents facing challengers seeking to outflank them on the left.

These progressives aren’t necessarily sweeping races up and down the
ballot. But they are winning enough of them—and generating enough
grass-roots pressure—to continue driving the party leftward.

In
Texas, a greater percentage of the progressive candidates either won or
advanced to a runoff than the percentage of moderate and establishment
candidates who did. In Illinois, the success rate between the wings was
about equal. Five moderate or establishment candidates won their
primaries, compared with three progressives.

The question,
though, is whether this frenzied activity is accomplishing anything
aside from sharpening the party’s ideological edge. If progressives are
unable to expand the Democratic Party’s grip beyond big cities and other
solidly blue districts, they are stuck right back where they started at
the beginning of the Trump era—an influential force trapped within in a
powerless minority.

Winning control of the House this November
will ultimately hinge on the Democratic Party’s ability to compete in
the suburbs, in places like Orange County, California, and southeastern
Pennsylvania. Until progressives prove they can nominate candidates who
can win on that final frontier, their mission is incomplete.

Their
progress so far is mixed. In the suburban Chicago House seat viewed as
the best Democratic pickup opportunity in the state in 2018, the
candidate who billed herself as “unapologetically progressive” finished
fourth in a crowded primary last week, well behind three other Democrats
who hesitated to adopt that label and stopped short of calling for a
single-payer health system.

Yet in the historically Republican
suburbs of Houston, the insurgent wing delivered an eye-opening display
of its muscle. Despite the best efforts of the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee to torpedo activist Laura Moser—the DCCC viewed her
as a less-than-viable prospective nominee in a competitive suburban
Texas district—progressives rallied around her and boosted her into a
May 22 Texas runoff.

The outcome of that contest won’t provide
conclusive evidence about the direction of the party. For one thing,
Moser’s opponent is endorsed by some traditionally liberal groups,
including EMILY’s List. But it will provide some insight into how far
progressive insurgents have come this year, or how far they still have
to go to become the new Democratic establishment.